The respect I had for this trio and their music is
mighty. Now their drummer is dead and they have disbanded and it's a
fucking shame. Silkworm is the kind of band the world needs more of. I'll
resist the temptation to make the obvious and overused comment, "Why
couldn't it have been the drummer from [insert shitty band here] instead?"
Anyway,
here's a very short requiem: Silkworm were around for 18 (!) years and
probably would have been around for another 20. They were originally from
Montana but relocated to Chicago early on. They put out ten or so albums,
an assload of singles and even
a compilation or two. 'Literate,' 'clever,' 'guitar-driven,'
'post-punk' are descriptions you'll find in some of their reviews. It
sounds like rock and roll to me.
These are guys who were never able to quit their day
jobs, who have never been played on a radio station higher on the FM dial
than 92.1, whom Jann Wenner has never heard of. They used their vacation
time to pile into a van and drive back and forth across the country,
bringing the rock to the people... committed to a life in music, no matter
what. They even toured Europe and Japan once or twice. People here and
there would buy their records on a whim or recommendation, or they would
stumble upon them playing some club. Some of those people would say, 'holy
crap why I haven't I heard of these guys before?' And the next time
Silkworm passed through town, they would drag some friends to see them.
And thus the band got to keep putting out records and touring. I saw them
for the last time in April at the Knitting Factory here in L.A. One of the
greatest pleasures in seeing live music performed is when a band makes it
look effortless. That's how that show was. The three guys were totally
comfortable in their skin and in their music, and they were having as much
fun as anyone in the crowd.
So anyway, Michael Dahlquist is dead and his terrific
band is now defunct. That's my half-assed tribute. Pay your respects by
downloading a few Silkworm tunes and nodding your head to his estimable
work at the drums.
I first discovered Silkworm after buying their album
'Firewater' in 1996. Not sure what brought me to them. It was one
of those purchases where you have no idea what to expect when you slide
the disk into the player. That feeling of anticipation is what keeps me
going as a shameless music geek... that each new record could be one that
will change my life. Well, 'Firewater' didn't change my life or anything,
but I loved it a lot immediately and still do. It's been in my regular
rotation for nearly ten years straight, which says a lot... and it's
because of songs like
'The Lure of
Beauty,' which "drift like a dreamboat and shake like a
battleship."
'Wet Firecracker'
is the song that drunk fans yelled for the most at their shows. No band
likes disappointing drunk fans so it became a staple.
The unique ability of booze to bring out one's inner
asshole is the topic of
'Drunk.' It features a few great lines which always make me smile,
such as this one: "What drunk with any common sense at all would mix his
beer and gin like that?/He must really want to get it back." They were not
afraid to cram as many lyrics as possible into a song.
But if you listen only one Silkworm song today, make it
'Let's
Kill Saturday Night.' They didn't write it (Robbie Fulks did) and
its slow, country-ish delivery is a departure. But damn if it isn't just
the purtiest, salt-of-the-earthiest song ever. It is seared into my brain.
I listen to it once a week at least, usually when pulling on my drinking
pants. Can't you just see Springsteen doing this one?
Also, Silkworm have recorded a cover of Fleetwood Mac's
'The Chain,' that is, apparently, "the shit." I have never heard it. If
you have it or ever come across it please send it my way.
Oh, and the worst part of the terrible death of Michael
Dahlquist and the others? As stories this fucked up usually go, it's that
everyone BUT the crazy bitch died. I guess there's some consolation
knowing that she'll be alive to suffer through a
well-deserved jail sentence.
7/25/05:
It was a relief to discover that I can
still enjoy
Beck's
scattershot folk-funk even after finding out the
dude's a Scientologist.
(I
wish I could say the same about John Travolta; his scattershot folk-funk
just rings hollow to me now.) These days Beck's got a crack new band and a
big-ass stage show that includes a giant boombox that descends from the
heavens like George Clinton's Mothership. Nice.
A few months ago Valerie Plame and I were among a few hundred lucky enough
to catch a
double super-secret tour warm-up show at a tiny
L.A. club
in Beck's former/my current hood. It was only the third-or-so show he'd
ever done with the new players so there were a few rough patches and
missed cues. Such is rock and the crowd loved him all the more for them.
Friday
I saw the slick, road-tested version of same in a 6,000+ seat
corporate-approved Entertainment Venue. The best thing I can
say about the latest show -- besides the fact that it made me want to
dance all night, baby -- is that it still felt as loose and shambolic as
that club gig. Don't get me wrong: the band is now, to borrow a phrase,
tighter than Steely Dan's asshole. If Bootsy Collins had wandered on stage
in the middle of, say, 'Black Tamborine' or 'Sexx Laws' he would have fit
right in. I just mean that Beck, as a performer, is so relaxed, so
effortless and so, well, cool, man, that he makes even a highly designed,
rehearsed production feel mellow and off-the-cuff.
In 2003, after we caught Beck solo -- just him, an organ and some canned
beats -- a gobsmacked friend raved, "That guy's so talented it's scary." I
don't know if it's the alien DNA or what, but he does appear to have
superpowers. I guess the secret is he's just not afraid to try anything --
but he also doesn't take himself too seriously. On Friday he sang
earnestly and sweetly, rapped goofily and rocked hard. He played guitar
(acoustic and electric), bass, piano, and percussion. He even sat in,
lamely, on drums and manned the wheels of steel for some underwhelming
DJing. On top of that, he covered -- and improved upon -- Nelly's 'Hot in
Herre' and, during
'High Five,' led the crowd in a call-and-response tribute to
designer jeans ("Ooh la la Sassoon!"). Why not? The fucker can dance
too. Anyway, suffice to say
his beat is correct
and he's on his way to becoming a national treasure. Assuming he rids his
body of the evil thetans and reaches Level XJ1,
I predict
someday he'll accept a
Kennedy Center Honor. Oh and he played 'Loser,' which I assume was
a rare treat. I'm not sure he does that one so much anymore.
My favorite tune on
the new album might be the chugging 'Go
It Alone.' I also like 'Black
Tambourine' but it's not as good as
Prince's version.
7/21/05:
I
saw this movie called
'Me and You and
Your Mama and That Guy Over There and Everyone We Know'. It
was cute and amusing, if overly self-conscious in that
look-at-me-I'm-creating-art-over-here kind of way. I'm not sure if a
movie's a success if I leave wondering whether the main character was
supposed to come off as a little retarded or not. It's kind of like a
chick-flick 'Napoleon Dynamite' directed by Bergman.
Anyway there's a scene that's one of the funniest things I've encountered
on a screen in years. I haven't seen a whole theater howl like that in
unison in a long time. Since
'Bio-Dome'
probably. I won't ruin it for you but I will say the scene involves poop.
But not in the way that you might think (you sicko), like the poop in the
pool in 'Caddyshack' or a Farrelly Brothers kind of thing. It's more about
a romantic *idea* of poop. It's worth the price of admission alone, so go
see it or rent it or add it to your queue or download it or buy it from
the guy with the blanket on the corner or whatever.
And since this is a music "column," I'll say this: the film's score was
terrific. Incredibly simple, DIY-style electronic stuff. Not much more
than very basic bloops and bleeps and skronks that somehow manage to be
very evocative. I was not surprised to find out the composer is
Michael
Andrews, the same guy who did the music for the great and
mysterious 'Donnie Darko.'
Danny Elfman's a
badass but the Oompah Loompah songs
from the new 'Wonka' movie sucked big hairy gobstoppers. Overproduced and
totally empty and dumb. The whole movie gave me a eadache and made me
wish I'd brought my bong. Anyway I forgive Elfman because I used to love
Oingo Boingo in high school, even though they were kind of
a poor
man's Devo.
I always take care to appreciate (or not) a movie's music but I don't
think I've ever purchased a record or CD of a film score. There are two
kinds of people: those who make a point of listening to the score again
after seeing the movie and those who don't. Is it sexist of me to suggest
that women are more inclined to listen to them? That's a ridiculous
statement. But I say that because I remember a number of different girls
in college who loved their cassettes of scores and I don't know any guys
who do. The music from
'The Mission' and
'The Cook
the Thief His Wife & Her Lover & Everyone They Know' was very
popular back in the dorms. Of course, in college I obsessed over 'The Song
Remains the Same,' which I guess technically is a film score.
It always sucks to watch a classic movie again and find the score just
hopelessly outdated and corny. That happened recently when I saw
'Midnight Express' for the first time in over ten years. The
movie totally holds up; really powerful and ten times more frightening
than any horror flick. (The joke's been made a thousand times but it's
true: Getting ass-raped by a Turkish street criminal is way scarier than
being chased around a lake by Jason Vorhees.) But the music in 'Midnight
Express' has almost a disco sound, except really earnest and serious. I
found it inappropriate and kind of silly at points. It was 1978 and you
can just see the bell-bottomed movie producer doing coke at Studio 54,
going, "Picture this for that
Turkish
prison thing: 'Le Freak' but more, you know, ominous!"
To the tunes.
Faith
No More did a cool cover of John Barry's infamous theme to
'Midnight
Cowboy' that gets a bit metal as it crescendoes. Good stuff. It's
the perfect, winking coda to their epic 1992 album 'Angel Dust,' which
lyrically covers some of the same grimy, desperate territory that Ratso
Rizzo did in the movie. (Man I love that band -- even though we have them
to thank for Korn Bizkit and all the other nu-metal dickheads. That
trend's dead, right? Phew.)
The ever-generous MOJO
sent out a nice companion CD with an issue on movie music last year. It's
filled with all the usual suspects: Ennio Morricone, Quincy Jones, Elmer
Bernstein, Henry Mancini, etc. Check out this
slice of 1970s grooviana, from a flick I'd never heard of called
'Death
Line.' It's credited to Will Malone. Those strings are the most,
brother.
Also dig on this bit of blaxploitation
chicken scratch from
'Truck
Turner'... Isaac Hayes completely biting his own style. It's
a shameless, dead-on 'Theme from Shaft' ripoff, right down to the chicks
in the background cooing, "Truck Turner!" Pretty funny. And pretty fonky
baby.
What movie music do you particularly like?
7/18/5: HELLFIRE
Nick
Tosches is a writer interested in that point when an artist
becomes inseparable from myth. Musicians like Charlie Parker, Billie
Holliday, Elvis, Hendrix, Milli Vanilli... at a certain point these
figures passed into the realm of fairy tale and it became impossible (or
unnecessary) to know them simply as people. Tosches understands this
transformation better than most and that's why his novelized
biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, 'Hellfire,' kicks so much ass. This
book is amazing because it's completely full of shit, yet still an
aggressively insightful character study of a true giant. By spinning
fantasy, inventing dialogue and couching the whole sordid story as a
parable of heaven and hell, Tosches finds more truth about The Killer than
any recitation of the facts could ever do.
What really happened that day in 1976 when Jerry Lee was arrested outside
Graceland? Tosches doesn't give a crap. He knows that just the fact that
it happened at all is a delicious bit of rock lore that speaks volumes
about his subject.
So he opens the book with Jerry Lee driving his Caddy up to the
gates of Graceland at three in the morning waving a .38 derringer and
demanding to see the bloated Elvis, so he can remind the
fried-peanut-butter-addled billionaire with the dyed hair what rock and
roll used to be about. He shouts at the guards, "You just tell him
Killer's here!" They promptly call the cops.
I give 'Hellfire' a 28.89 on the 'bungle scale. It's a scorcher of a book.
I haven't read them all but so far I've found you can't go wrong with any
Nick Tosches work. He started out as a critic for 'Creem' in the 70s but
soon graduated to straight-up literature (and even poetry,apparently) and
he's been churning out big ass books -- not just about music -- every few
years since then.
Speaking
of The Killer, probably my favorite live album of all time is
Jerry Lee Lewis' 'Live at the Star Club, Hamburg.'
Historically, what's most fascinating about this record is when it's
recorded: 1964, nearly a decade after what many people would consider his
prime. His contract with Sun Records expired the year before. By this
point rock music was dominated by the Beatles and Stones and Herman's
Hermits. Not a lot of people were aware - or cared, anyway - that Jerry
Lee was still out there slugging it out with his piano night after night
(just as
he is today). His once-promising career had gone down in flames
five years earlier after he married his kin and, worse, was unrepentant
about it.
The locale is pretty poetic too: Germany's Star Club, the red light
district tavern where the Beatles paid their dues. The crowd is drunk and
carousing and you get the feeling that Jerry Lee hates every damn fool in
the place. He hates them the way a 7th grade private school teacher
earning $22,000 hates his rich-kid students, with their gelled hair and
sense of entitlement. They think they know it all but they don't know
shit. At one point the crowd is chanting his name -- "Jerry, Jerry,
Jerry!" and Jerry Lee dismisses them by shouting, "Alright already!" What
he means is, watch and learn, suckas.
This evening in 1964 he's a man with something to prove, and as Brooce
says, he proves it all night. Fierce and frenetic, the show sounds like a
damn exorcism.
'High School Confidential'. This song
smokes so hard it makes you feel sorry for that piano. I wish my high
school was like this.
'Lewis' Boogie' is his mission
statement, in which he does his little boogie woogie every day.
After he rips through Ray Charles' 'What'd I Say' the crowd goes crazy and
he gives them what they want, which is more. I'm too lazy to edit both
parts of the song together, so here's just the
reprise, which kicks back off with him snarling at someone in his
pickup band, "Play that thing right, boy!". I love how the song slowly
builds back up to a frenzy.
This ain't no oldies/Cousin Brucie/Time-Life compilation type stuff. The
dude's a punk and he'd very much like to punch you in the nose. It was
out-of-print for way too long but the
good people at Rhino
lovingly brought it into the digital realm a few years ago.
What
live albums do you
like? And here's a question: has there ever been a decent live hip
hop album?
7/15/5:
Check out this amazing rock resource,
CDzinc. Godawful interface but they (and I have no idea who 'they'
are) have been playing with it so hopefully improvements are on the way.
But plug in just about any artist you can think of (yes, even
C&C Music
Factory)... you can play entire albums (and in some cases entire catalogs)
right from the site. It's like net radio that you program. Every time I
come across something like this it gives me a glimmer of hope for the
human race. I mean, what selfless soul does this? Who spends countless
hours loading literally thousands of CDs onto a server so that you and I
have the option of hearing Neil Young's 'The Loner' at 3:08 PM Thursday if
we damn well feel like it? Huzzah to you, mysterious proprietor of CDzinc.
May your rock always roll and vice versa.
I have a secret wish for Arizona's
GIANT SAND:
that after 20 years of cult status their career will have a sudden Flaming
Lips-type surge and they'll be at the Bonnaroo Festival and in Dell
commercials and opening for Wilco and shit. They deserve it after quietly
making some of the sweetest, oddest, most thoughtful Am'rican-style music
out there all this time. It's an absurd notion, of course, since they're
old and ugly and actively avoid writing songs with choruses. I don't have
time today to wax rhapsodic about how head genius Howe Gelb's music is the
equivalent of a fever dream after being lost in the desert and being met
down at the oasis by Gram Parsons, Neil Young, John Prine, The Band and
the Meat Puppets. Give me a few beers and I'll bore you to tears about how
Gelb put the 'alt' in alt-country before some pencilneck writer even
coined the term. And don't get me started on the way he exerts expert
control over massive sheets of guitar distortion that provide texture to
his sun-baked poetry.
'Wonder' speaks for itself. It's just a damn purty song with one hell of a
hummable refrain. That's Victoria Williams squeaking out a verse or two.
'Stuck' is in the long tradition of folk song-as-story (ala Slick Rick).
It's about a man who gets stranded in the middle of nowhere with his young
child in their junker of a car. He's faced with sudden feelings of
helplessness and the realization that he's old. Check out the gorgeous
organ in the background as the tune winds down and the narrator flags down
a passing tractor trailer.
And here's
a special Giant Sand bonus track: Live to Tell.
Two-thirds of Giant Sand (minus the great Howe Gelb) play as
Calexico,
who also evoke the desert and who have become, in kind of a cruel twist,
better known than their mentor.
7/14/5:
A reader challenge: my pardner and I are
working on a story with an Elliott Smith/Ian
Curtis-type-doomed-rock-singer main character. We need to come up with a
name for him and would like to be all clever and writerly about it.
Inspired by
Invisible Library, a cool site about books that only appear in
other books, we want to name our dude from an existing, hopefully
appropriate song. Can you think of rock songs that are about fictional
characters, specifically ones that are musicians? Think 'Benny and the
Jets' but more interesting and less Elton John-y.
I'll
have to discuss prizes with the 'bungle editorial board but I'm sure I can
convince Hans to open up the coffers.
Speaking of 'Benny and the Jets',
Biz Markie's
has to be the definitive version.
This came as a flexi-disk with a 'Grand Royal' magazine maybe ten years
ago. Remember flexi-disk records, those flimsy plastic 45s that would come
with comic books or music mags? (Remember records?) I hope the flexi-disk
is in the Smithsonian because that was a hell of an innovation. Deeply
flawed but still pretty brilliant in a democratic, music-for-the-masses
kind of way. They sounded like crap, always arrived bent and would scrape
your stylus down to a nub. I remember piling nickles on the square edges
of the disks to get them to lay flat on the turntable. But they were an
original music delivery system and my hat's off to the inventor for doing
the best with the technology of the day. I wish I'd kept all mine,
especially a Houston Oilers 'Love Ya Blue' 45 that I had as a kid, though
I couldn't tell you what was on it. An Earl Campbell, Dan Pastorini duet,
perhaps? What flexi-disks do you remember?
I
generally
have no interest in meeting my heroes (kill yr idols and all that) but I
have to say I'd love to spend the afternoon with Biz Markie. We'd smoke a
joint and hang out at Albee Square Mall, grab some White Castle and crack
each other up making fun of people walking by. I'd have to keep an eye on
the Biz, though, cuz that jokester's liable to slip a booger into my
Orange Julius. The guy seems just straight-up likeable and I'm sure it's
no coincidence that he's the most prolific guest MC in hip hop history.
(Ok, I just made that up, but it's got to be true. He appears on more rap
records than James Brown.) I have a very vivid high school memory of
driving home on a Saturday night in Fairfield County, wearing my best
rugby shirt, trying to make my curfew, listening to KISS-FM out of NYC. DJ
Red Alert. The station came in staticky, like it was from another planet,
which in a way it was. Anyway they played Biz Mark's 'The Vapors' and Biz
was all slow and marble-mouthed and behind the beat and the production was
muddy and it sounded vaguely dangerous and hilarious at the same time and
I was hooked. And who doesn't remember Biz's brief shining tenure as an
MTV darling -- where in the 'Just A Friend' video he showed that, like all
clowns, he was hurting inside. I finally saw the Biz perform at Tramps on
21st Street in the mid-90s, with Nice n' Smooth if I remember right. He
was way past his prime and could barely catch his breath he was so fat.
The set lasted maybe a half hour and some of it was embarrassing. But at
certain points during the show he found his flow and there was no denying
the sheer magnetism he's got as performer. His later albums sucked and
he'll probably be remembered more for losing a sampling lawsuit than for
his freestyle skills, but he'll always get props from me for shamelessly
ripping off that awful 'Nobody Beats the Wiz' ad jingle. But I guess that
was a no brainer, really.
Here's a pretty good Biz guest spot: 'Stone Age'
by De La Soul.
I'll stay on the hip hop tip for today's installment of Lost Albums You
May Or May Not Care About. After the production team known as the Bomb
Squad pretty much changed music forever with the two landmark Public Enemy
albums, they produced a record by a none-more-obscure rapper called
SON OF BAZERK. The album 'Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk' came out in '91
and was credited to Son of Bazerk Featuring No Self Control And The Band.
The album cover was a pretty great James Brown ripoff/homage, with this
guy Bazerk in a suit posing like the Godfather of Soul. Listening to it
for the first time in maybe ten years, I can say it's pure chaos, even by
today's standards. The production is totally schizo, with random samples
flying around like crazy and Bazerk shouting like Chuck D, if Chuck D just
wanted to dance, goddammit. He's even got his own Flava Flav, this chick
MC Half Pint, providing color in the background. The best song by far is
'Change The Style,' which may be
the most aptly named rap tune since Vanilla Ice's 'Ice Is Workin It'.
Because they, you know, change the style a lot. It careens between reggae
and soul and funk and there's even a hilarious metal riff at the end. Very
strange. No surprise that this didn't exactly burn up the charts, but it's
worth a listen as a hip hop curio. I don't know any more about Bazerk than
that and neither does the trusty internet. Does anyone out there?
Here's a (nonrap) site I can't get enough of,
Beyond
the Beat Generation. All kinds of out-there nuggets with plenty of
delicious distortion and Hammond organ and songs about sweet rides and
fast chicks. You know your spacey, bald uncle who won't shut up about the
hair he used to have and how he was in this killer band back in college
who even cut a record that was way ahead of its time, man? Well you'll
probably hear it there.
7/13/05:
When the Verbungle editorial staff summons you up to
their gleaming high-rise boardroom and offers you temporary space on their
corner of the interweb, it's no joke. I mean the salary alone... I've
already put a down
payment on a little two-seater I've had my eye on. But more than the
money, I want to do my part to keep the beloved 'bungle up and running.
First off, I'd like to use this space to urge all four of the readers to
do the same. Inundate Hans with lists and snippets and reviews and naked
pictures of your wives and girlfriends and daughters, to the point where
he simply can't shut Verbungle down because he's too busy sifting through
all our crap.
One thing I'll be doing is giving what I consider to be unheralded
musicians some attention. For instance, did you know that the guys from
Bel Biv Devoe were originally in a little band called New Edition??
Seriously, our first offering in the Old Bands You Really Should Hear If
You're Not Too Busy series is
RAILROAD JERK, from Manhattan/Jersey. Life span: much of the 90s.
Four albums and some EPs I think but the one to get is 1995's LP 'One
Track Mind.' I even have a vague memory of enjoying cold beers and a
mid-90s Railroad Jerk show at the late, great Cooler on 14th Street with
the future Mr. and Mrs. Hans Bungle. For the life of me I never understood
why Railroad Jerk never "made it." And I don't mean made it like appearing
on MTV Cribs and recording duets with the jagoff from Matchbox 20. But
even in the indie world they always pretty much struggled, before fizzling
out with a shrug. I always figured they should have been as big as, say, a
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion... cracking the 'mainstream' with a few
clueless graphs in Rolling Stone, a second stage slot on Lollapalooza,
maybe getting Beck to play harmonica on a track... but managing to chug
along thanks to a loyal following on the ground in clubs. They were
treading sorta similar musical ground as JSBX (urban bloozepunk) and their
singers both look good with a pompadour. Plus RRJ had killer songs.
Singer/mastermind Marcellus Hall is a clever wordsmith with an
iconoclastic, all-American voice. I still love their ramshackle sound.
Peep: 'Gun Problem'. It's kind of quaint when he bellows, "This is the
nineties!" Not anymore, sucka. These days Hall is a sought-after graphic
artist. He worked for the NYPress at the same time I did some writing for
them and since then he's designed stuff for the NYTimes and even a New
Yorker cover. And, happily, he has another, more rootsy, band called
White Hassle, which presaged another,
better-marketed garage blues band with 'White' in their name by a few
years. Unfortunately they never seem to record or tour anymore either.
They haven't even updated their website in two years. Anyway, here's a
swell, melancholy
(swellancholy?) White Hassle tune for your pleasure:
'Life Is Still
Sweet'. My theory is that it's the songwriter's requiem for his former
band. Or it's probably about a girl. It's one of my all-time favorites and
I consider it a pitch-perfect, timeless tune with some turns of phrase
that would even make your grandmother smile.
I know Live8 is stale by now but I was traveling and only just got to
watch selections from the show(s) (which some geek painstakingly posted
here. How great is the internet?
Am I right, people?). I eagerly downloaded Stevie Wonder's set and went
right to 'Higher Ground', one of the fonkiest songs evah. And as the
stuttering organ riff kicks in I say to myself, that roadie looks a little
lost up there. All of a sudden Stevie announces, "Ladies and gentleman,
Rob Thomas." And Fucking Rob Thomas -- not Stevie Wonder -- starts singing
'Higher Ground'. I know this has been said a hundred times, but it's true:
Who is this middle-of-the-road clown and how does he convince one legend
after another to get on stage with them? He's already ruined Santana for
me and Willie Nelson's on notice. What, Stevie couldn't get Hootie? You'd
think Rob Thomas would say to Stevie, "You know what? I'm humbled just to
be asked, but I don't even have the right to share the stage with POCO.
I'll just sip my Smirnoff Ice and consider myself lucky to watch from the
wings."
Stevie Wonder is the only person on the planet who looks good in a muumu.
It used to be only Stevie Wonder and really really fat Alabamans could
rock the muumu with authority. Stevie's looking pretty big these days so I
guess he was just growing into it all those years. I once waited in line
alone for four hours on the Upper East Side for the privelege of being
crammed into the basement of an HMV to watch Stevie Wonder play a free
in-store show at midnight. It was totally worth it, of course, except
Spike Lee was right up front like it was a Knicks game, making a spectacle
of himself. We're all feeling the music, Spike, and we're happy you're
good buddies with Stevie Wonder. And we know you're a celebrity and crave
attention but please take two steps back and let him play unencumbered by
your insecurities.
Some more Live8 observations:
Pink Floyd sings four songs, all of which have David Gilmour on vocals?
It's as if Gilmour said to Waters, "Ok we'll let you back in for the sake
of the starving Africans but not at the expense of my ego." They couldn't
let him sing one song solo? He wrote all the lyrics anyway. So poor Roger
Waters ended up lip synching along off-mic, which was kind of sad. He
really put his all into mouthing the lyrics while playing, scrunching up
his eyes and stuff. You see that a lot, where a guy in a band who's second
fiddle wishes he was the front man (I don't mean an actual fiddle player
necessarily; few bands have two fiddles these days anyway). The dude will
lip synch along to show that, you know, he COULD step in if Mr. Big Shot
over there drops dead of a heroin overdose or something. Anyway, props to
Roger Waters for giving a shout out to Syd Barrett. It would have been
funny if they pulled Syd out of the National Health Home For Batty And
Loony Musicians and stuck him in a rocking chair on stage. Now that would
be a
reunion. (Yes, he's still alive. I checked.) Pink Floyd sounded great and
I'll admit to getting goosebumps watching them play 'Breathe'. If those
egos can reconnect after decades it gives me hope for a Van Halen reunion.
With Rob Thomas on vocals.
Bono slipping a verse of 'Blackbird' into the end of 'Beautiful Day'
tugged on my heartstrings pretty good. It felt completely off the cuff,
though I'm sure it was decided by a committee and signed off by Kofi Annan.
Releasing white doves was a little much though.
I don't know who Paul McCartney's drummer is but after this plum gig is
over he could easily sit in with Sepultura or Slayer. McCartney doing
'Helter Skelter' was surprisingly kickass. You know, for a geezer. During
that song there's a quick, pricelss shot of a kid in the crowd, maybe 14,
completely shocked that this old man is rocking so hard. You can almost
hear him thinking, "He's not as good as Linkin Park but maybe grandma
doesn't have such bad taste after all."
Patcox dared me to watch Motley Crue doing 'Kickstart My Heart' and I
double dog dare you. Talk about a trainwreck.
Audioslave shouldn't play Rage or Soundgarden songs. It only draws
attention to how weak they are in comparison to those bands. I bet Chris
Cornell has it in his rider that there's a always a trunk full of white
wife beaters backstage. He wears them once, then throws them out.
I'll close with a question for the audience. Coldplay: over-earnest,
simpering wankers or snooze-inducing, pretentious twats?
